James Dobson devoted two half-hour radio shows to his post-Obama victory thoughts along with a cadre of six other religious conservatives. Here is a brief summary of their discussion...
This post is an adjunct to a larger story, Katherine Harris, Sarah Palin Linked To Same Prayer Warfare Network which explores the fact that both Katherine Harris and Sarah Palin have been in the 'Spiritual Warfare' network of C. Peter Wagner, the self-appointed head of The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
A research team publishing on this web site, Talk To Action, has just released a A new 36 page report ( read online / PDF file / some of the highlights of the report ) on the New Apostolic Reformation, its structure, beliefs, history and agenda.
[for transcript of Katherine Harris / Ken Malone's October 3, 2006 conference call see 8th paragraph into story]
A recording of a 2006 conference call between Katherine Harris, then Florida U.S. Congressional Representative, and Florida evangelist Ken Malone, reported on in a November 4th, 2006 Tampa Tribune story because of remarks Harris made during the call which some took as anti-Jewish, indicates that Katherine Harris was then active in the same national Spiritual Warfare network which Sarah Palin has been associated with and may still be a member of.
Ignorance results primarily from two sources: poverty and privilege. Either denied an education or entitled to power, this isolation that enables ignorance breeds arrogance, and our society suffers from both.
In an interview on American News Project, Joe Bageant talks about ignorance and insight among America's working class in rural Virginia.
In an article on Daily Kos, some thoughtful people describe how even San Francisco's politically correct can be led astray by allowing their intelligence to be overshadowed by their emotions. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom discusses this human rights tragedy in his city.
Imagine a movement, predicated on the notion that our world is swarming with demon spirits, witches and 'spirits of witchcraft' that was obsessed with driving out those demons, spirits and witches because then crime and societal disorders of all sort would cease, garden vegetables would grow to enormous size, and declining coral reefs would miraculously regrow.
Imagine a religious movement that declared adherents of all competing religions and belief systems were under demonic influence and maintained that an entire generation of its members would soon rise up, supernaturally equipped, to purify the Earth of evil and "take back the land" for God.
Imagine its members started to go into politics, perhaps running for the local school board.
A video starring Thomas Muthee as a prayer
warrior and witch hunter was released in 1999. "Transformations"
was the first in a series of videos that would soon become the heart
of the Transformations franchise, a network of prayer warriors,
ministries, organizations, and businesses, brought together for the
purpose of promoting Christian theocracies. They share the goal of
bringing their own communities and nations into the "Kingdom."
These videos would play a major role in the teaching and promotion of
spiritual mapping and spiritual warfare. Following is the story of
those videos and how the Transformations brand has propelled the
development of an emerging international belief system, the New
Apostolic Reformation, and how it is bringing that movement into your
community and your government.
A video starring Thomas Muthee as a prayer warrior and witch hunter was released in 1999. "Transformations" was the first in a series of videos that would soon become the heart of the Transformations franchise, a network of prayer warriors, ministries, organizations, and businesses, brought together for the purpose of promoting religious based governments. They share the goal of bringing their own communities and nations into the "Kingdom." These videos would play a major role in the teaching and promotion of spiritual mapping and spiritual warfare. Following is the story of those videos and how the Transformations brand has propelled the development of an emerging international belief system, the New Apostolic Reformation, and is bringing that movement into your community and your government.
Link here to Part One:
The Unique Evangelizing System of the Transformation Videos
The Videos of the Transformation Series
-Transformations I
-Transformations II
-Transformations IV (Let the Sea Resound)
Source of the Transformations - Sentinel Group, and the New Apostolic Reformation
The Significance of Muthee's Anointing of Sarah Palin
Statistics
There are Transformations networks connected to
Sentinel Group and "prayer warriors" under the authority of
Wagner's Apostles in almost every state and most major cities.
Following is a small sampling of their organizations
and activities. They take many forms, but most Transformation
entities are presented as charitable or community service
organizations. While these organizations are also often presented as
"reconciliation councils" and "religious unity"
groups at the ground level, the top level leaders openly proclaim
their goal of using these entities for "possessing the gates of
the enemy." Recognize that many local participants in these
activities may take the organizations at face value as charitable
organizations, and may not be aware of the beliefs and goals of their
leadership. Each example is from a Transformation related entity or
one of the "prayer warrior" groups under the New Apostolic
leadership.
"The transformation movement is
accelerating and spreading across the nations. Currently no less than
500 communities have experienced supernatural transformation as God's
presence permeates people and society at every level. This isn't a
season of revival that is limited to one location or lead by a
ministry, this is a widespread move of God sweeping across
communities from one end of the earth to another, crossing
denominations, ethic backgrounds, gender, spheres of society. Nobody
is "managing" it or controlling the outcome." - Rhonda
Hughey of Fusion
Ministry
In the world of the intertubes the word "friend" has taken on a whole new meaning. A friend can be someone you've never met, never even talked to except through the medium of the web, or never communicated with in any way except reading what they wrote every day, over time coming to feel as attached to them as to the people whose hands you held when they were sick or whose jokes made you groan over a beer at your local pub.
Is it as real? I don't know but it sure seems that way. I never met Rev Andrew Weaver in person. We talked on the phone a couple of times and emailed each other regularly but I didn't even know what he looked like. Yet when I called up Talk to Action the other day and discovered that he died over the weekend, I was as bereft as if I had lost the kind of friend who might have introduced me to my first Little Feat record or talked me out of getting serious about that girl who stole every penny from her last boyfriend and then burned down his house.
Andrew would have done either, maybe both, had the need arisen. Fortunately it didn't. But we did have long talks about Bush, his library, and the nature of god, the universe and everything. I found it odd having the same kind of conversations with Andrew (I never called him Andy; one, well, wouldn't - he wasn't the "Andy" type, not to me) in our respective middle age that I used to have in my 20's, those deep, theological and philosophical discussions about life and love that you never seem to have once the pressures of daily survival grip you with their claws.
Two of the people with the most on-the-ground experience in dealing with white christian nationalists in the United States -- Devin Burghart and Eric Ward (both currently with Center for New Community's Building Democracy Initiative in Chicago) -- will tell you that the formula they've found to be effective is Isolate; Inoculate; Educate. Borrowed from the public health model, they will tell you it is a sequential formula for good reason.
When viewed as a social disease, aggression based on unreasonable fear that leads to hate can only be constrained by isolating the transmitters (social movement entrepreneurs), inoculating their targeted audiences (potential recruits), and educating society at large in prophylactic praxis. Continuing the analogy, they find it almost impossible to conduct education amidst a full-blown epidemic; hysteria is also not a conducive atmosphere in which to reach out to fundamentalist constituencies.
Beginning with the assumption that right-wing followers aren't especially more misinformed than liberals, it is their behavior that must be addressed first and foremost. It's not OK to threaten, harass, or assault people who think or believe differently (a non-negotiable principle). If we find we can recruit some to support standards of public conduct where all can feel safe and welcome to participate, great, but we should be cautious in our hopes for conversion of our present self-declared enemies; many are damaged beyond repair.
And so it becomes a matter of setting priorities: do we focus on stopping the instigators of the anti-democratic movement in America, or do we emphasize efforts to persuade those who hate us that they are wrong? In the end, I am convinced that the network of churches in the Midwest that tithe to the Center for New Community have it right: keep an eye on the bad guys, listen to what's going on in their communities, report suspicious organizing activities, and keep lines of communication open with conservative moral authorities who have the ear of those most vulnerable to hate mongering.
Because the message we need to make abundantly clear is that hate crime and political violence will not be tolerated. Their followers need to understand that not heeding this message will have consequences: loss of job, loss of family, loss of freedom. If we are not willing to back up these warnings, then we do not deserve to be self-governing.
Kevin Annett's documentary film Unrepentant tells the story of the Canadian holocaust. For those unfamiliar with the systematic mass murder of indigenous people in Canada by the United Church of Canada and the Canadian government, this is possibly the most powerful film you will ever see. Testimony from survivors of the Indian Residential School death camps exposes how "Christianity was hijacked" by a people Annett shows could "kill without a shred of conscience".
The syndicated radio program Writer's Voice , which originates at WMUA, the radio station at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, recently featured Dispatches contributors Chip Berlet, Leo Maley, and me in an hour long program. Among the topics discussed are the differences between the Religious Right and Religious Left.
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